Top Down Design in Autodesk Fusion 360

I first want to be sure that everyone understands what I mean by "Top Down Design".  When you have an assembly, containing one or more components, and you need to design a new component that needs to match another component, in some fashion, that is top down design.  For example, if I need to design a plate that will bolt to the top of the blue component of my assembly, I do not want to have to measure the hole spacing for the tapped holes, I want to design in directly on top of the component and graphically pick up the hole centers.  

In my last article I showed you two methods of creating an assembly by either using "Linked" or "Contained" components.  In this article I want to show you how to design this top plate in both environments.  With either method, the top plate will be "adaptive" which means if the hole locations, in the blue component, move the tapped holes in the top plate will automatically update their position to match.  Of course at any time you can break this "adaptive" link and the hole locations in the top plate will become static. 

 My first video will be of the top down design of the top plate in a "Contained" assembly.  If you did not read the previous article, this is an assembly which contains all of the components internally.

My second video will be of the top down design of the same plate in a "Linked" assembly.  If you did not read the previous article, this is an assembly which contains components that are only linked, as separate component files, to the assembly.

If you watched both methods you have probably noticed that creation of a top down design component is easiest in a "Contained" assembly but if the link needs to be broken, the process is a lot harder than in a "Linked" assembly. 

You also have the ability to created a top down designed "Contained"  component in a "Linked" assembly and visa versa if you would like but don't get yourself too confused.